I am more of an Ocean Finance man, where you can obtain a yacht and a better looking bird than Vorderman by dialing their quick and easy number.

This could catch on,

We could have Patrick Stewart in charge of Britain's Space Program.

Some bloke off casualty as the new advisor on health.

And of course Del Boy as the new chancellor of the exchequer

Riiiight, so how many mathematicians does Facebook have, squirreled away in head office performing research into differential calculus?

Yes, there are libraries of code at Facebook, based on mathematical algorithms. However even the newest (encryption) of these algorithms is years old and only took a few people out of the entire population of the planet to devise, develop and debug. Further, none of them are - or ever were - employed by Facebook.

I have a sneaking suspicion that what this guy is really talking about is basic arithmetic - adding-up and suchlike. Which also tells us that he doesn't actually know what mathematics is, so doesn't exactly instill much faith in his pontifications.

Carol Vorderman has shown something of a talent for money making from the gullible. As well as those glib ads about getting yourself deeper into debt, she has a line in fashionable detox diets (they probably, unlike the loans, won't do you any harm, but the science bit is a joke).

Anyway, this appointment yet again shows the vacuous nature of much of politics and public debate. A good looking, personable inidividual with some skill at mental arithmetic trumps somebody who actually works in the field of mathematics.

Anyway, at least they aren't using her for promoting education in English literature. Recall how she explained away her failure to answer a simple question about 12th Night by pointing out it was Shakespeare's fault for being as "dull as ditchwater", although that didn't stop Dorling Kindersley publishin a book called "English Made Easy" under her name.

Not very surprising to see that a chap whose only slightly successful job was in PR (he also was econonic adviser to Norman Lamont, so best keep him away from the Treasury) thinks we can solve skills shortages with a bit of celebrity gloss.

Del Boy as the new chancellor of the exchequer? By this time next year we'd all be millionaires.

Though frankly it would be hard for him to do a worse job than AD (hasn't that VAT cut refreshed the economy a treat?). Sad to see the Tories are scraping the barrel of cheap PR too, it's a shame that Gordon doesn't have a decent opposition. Could someone get a larger & more united party behind Nick Clegg maybe?

Tim#3

Get the chav scum in more debt to the newly nationalised banks and we are right back to the feudal system. I rather fancy a nice indentured servant.

Or would the Tories just rather za nu labour retained their sclerotic grip on the levers of power?

isn't that the one who gets all the extra time and still cannot workout the maths problems.

No brunette, it is 3 to the power of 5, divided by the log of 9, floored, duh 110.

I am sure she will make a fine spokesperson for maths, and we all wish her the best of British luck.

To suss that the current pack of tossers in clowning street, cant add up.

I'm ambivalent about this: certainly, the person to head up the taskforce should be at least mildly competent at mathematics, and Carol Vorderman is, not to put too fine a point on it, useless. There is a place for her in such a thing, but not leading it.

However, the country is at war with stupidity, and at the moment, stupidity is winning. Every year, the cohort of students arriving from school is worse than the previous, every year they know less, have fewer ideas, are more accustomed to being told that they are great when in fact they are terrible. I think we could do with every advantage we can get, and this mouthpiece, while vapid, could help.

If Vorderman was truly intelligent then she would balk at the concept of using her celebrity status to pimp loans. She is an average person and her only claim to fame is that she is good at sums on television. Anyone with half a brain can achieve this with some self training on mental calculation.

She feeds of this idea of being a maths genius, and most of the gullible public believe it. Sadly it seems that this extends to politicians.

She should be ashamed of herself.

They probably do have some mathematicians doing algorithmic work, they'll just be called computer scientists rather than mathematicians.

Then again, aren't they both failing to break even because nobody's yet figured out where real revenue is going to arise from to balance their books?

Yes maths is important, but outside of pure maths, it is just a tool (in the same way that pure mathematicians learn some programming), and it needs to be taught as part of the subject it applies to. for example, you couldn't teach physics or computing (couldn't teach it well anyway) without knowing a lot of maths.

when i was in college, the physics group was split into those who also did maths, and those who didn't, as those who didn't needed to be taught differently, but we all took the same exams at the end!!